BIG Fashion Podgorica is the biggest thing Montenegro has to offer in terms of retail therapy. With its forty eight thousand square metres of total space and roughly seventy shops, it is the place to be if you live in Podgorica. However, as soon as you look at its neighbours, this Montenegrin giant starts to look quite tiny. It is essentially a big fish in a very small pond.

Getting dwarfed by Belgrade

If you drive North to Serbia you will find the Galerija Belgrade which makes the Podgorica mall look like a garage. Galerija spreads over a massive ninety three thousand square metres of retail space and hosts over three hundred shops. Even the older Ušće Shopping Center in Belgrade is much larger with its fifty thousand square metres of retail space and about one hundred and fifty shops. You could probably fit the entire leasable area of BIG Fashion into the car park of these Serbian monsters.

The Albanian and Bosnian competition

If you head South to Albania you will find Tirana East Gate which is also significantly larger. It boasts ninety six thousand square metres of floor area and about one hundred and eighty shops. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Sarajevo City Center offers nearly fifty thousand square metres of space and over one hundred and fifty stores. Even the ARIA Centar in Sarajevo, which is quite compact, has forty three thousand square metres and around ninety shops.

The verdict on the tiny titan

The reality is that BIG Fashion Podgorica is only big because Montenegro is small. While it tries its best with its twenty four thousand square metres of shops, it simply cannot compete with the retail empires of its neighbours. It is a perfectly fine place for a quick errand but it is hardly a destination for a serious shopping spree. If you want a real mall experience you might need to keep driving until you reach a different capital.